Full Constant Light: A Story in Drabbles
by nebroadwe
Summary: Ursa's mother has told her that a brave face begets a bold heart; now she must put those words to the test. Spoilers for 'Zuko Alone' and 'The Day of Black Sun.'
1. Prologue

_The sages say that the world, which began in water, will end in fire; thus the bodies of the breathless dead are washed and then burned, to free them of earth in foretoken of that final dissolution._

_But she is breathless because her heart, brimful of fear, leaves her lungs no room to expand. The sweat on her brow, poor, sour substitute for scented water, glistens in the light from the lamp beside the old man's chair. In his stern gaze, nothing of fire now burns: neither pity, nor mercy, nor love._

He is already dead, _she realizes._

_And she ... ?_


	2. Maid and Bride

_"These three hours that we have spent, / Walking here, two shadows went /  
Along with us, which we ourselves produc'd." -- _John Donne, "A Lecture Upon the Shadow"

* * *

Ursa and her brothers mope crossly in their stifling nursery until their mother orders a picnic. Then down to the waterside they run, outstripping the basket-laden servants and startling a flock of turtleducks from the green bank into the lazy stream.

After lunch, the boys play among the reeds while Ursa listens to her mother's stories of princesses and benders. Occasionally they toss leftover bread to the suspicious turtleducks, who squabble over every crumb. Ursa shrinks from their snapping beaks. _A brave face begets a bold heart_, says her mother, and shows her how to shoo the birds away.

**oOoOoOo**

Ursa finds her brothers practicing their firebending on a catweasel, driving the hysterical beast back and forth between them with gouts of flame. _Stop, stop!_ she shouts, tugging at Zhang's belt, but he pushes her away. _Don't spoil my aim!_ he says. _We're not hurting it. We're not even touching it!_

She grabs the catweasel, but it claws her arms and she drops it. Zhang shoves her to the ground; she screams until he lifts her scorched hem before her eyes. Cheng blanches, hiding his hands in his sleeves.

She trades her silence for their promise to leave catweasels alone.

**oOoOoOo**

Before she is pledged to him, Ursa encounters the Fire Nation's second prince at court. From afar, he seems handsome, vigorous and convivial -- a little spoiled, perhaps, as royal scions often are. Then the Fire Lord proposes a match between them and, with her parents' assent, Ozai comes to pay his addresses.

He converses with her shrewdly, drawing and holding her gaze, listening to her words. Other swains have praised her beauty and grace, but Ozai takes her measure. It delights her to be so attentively weighed, so beguilingly sifted.

When he asks for her hand, she smiles and consents.

**oOoOoOo**

Warned that a married woman must learn to enjoy her husband's company, whatever his tastes, Ursa is relieved to find Ozai so heedful of her desires. Later she realizes he is less eager to please her than to prove himself -- but when her pleasure demonstrates his prowess, that distinction is moot. _Strong children are forged in the fires of love_, he reminds her, smirking as she blushes.

She, too, yearns for children, not as proof of her womanhood, but for their own sake. So she welcomes her husband whenever he comes to her, fanning their shared hope into a blaze.


	3. Mother

_"But, now the sun is just above our head, / We do those shadows tread, /  
And to brave clearness all things are reduc'd." _-- John Donne, "A Lecture Upon the Shadow"

* * *

Her first child is born both early and late, before his time and after too long a labor -- small, bloody and half-strangled by his own birth-cord. The midwife turns him upside-down and, calling his ancestors to his aid, slaps his backside until he gulps breath to wail.

Once in the habit, Zuko cries at all hours, ever hungry, greedy for the life so nearly denied him. Ursa steals him from the wet-nurse and suckles him herself, until Ozai forbids it. She sends the nurse a daily gift of honeycakes thereafter, to sweeten her milk and her charge's temper.

**oOoOoOo**

Lately widowed, Prince Iroh does not attend Ursa's birthday revels, but puts off his mourning for an hour to pay a private visit and present his gift with his own hands: a wooden box. Ursa smiles politely as she lifts its basket-woven lid, then breaks into delighted laughter on seeing the two young turtleducks nesting inside.

"The pond below the painted terrace has always looked a little lonely," Iroh says, well-satisfied.

Ozai mutters _Oh, really?_ under his breath -- the gardens teem with prouder birds -- but Ursa quickly gives her brother-in-law her hand to kiss. "Thank you," she replies.

**oOoOoOo**

Since her father took little note of his offspring before they were old enough to make intelligent conversation, Ursa does not find it odd that Ozai seldom visits the nursery, though she is pleased to discover him awkwardly cradling infant Azula one afternoon. "She looks right at me," he says, voice hushed.

"Of course," Ursa responds, adding with a teasing lilt, "She knows her father."

Ozai strokes Azula's palm so that her tiny fingers circle his. "Such a strong grip," he croons, and Ursa stifles a giggle. "You're well named, little one."

Charmed as well as amused, Ursa embraces them both.

**oOoOoOo**

Zuko brings his mother shells while Azula chases scuttling oyster-crabs up and down the beach and Ozai rows himself almost to the horizon to spear a fish for dinner. Having given the servants the evening off, Ursa roasts his catch herself on hot coals under the open sky; her family picks it clean, squabbling over the choicest bits, and buries the bones in the sand.

Afterward, fireworks: _A comet!_ Azula squeals as a sparkling golden ball rockets over the rooftree, and Zuko shouts, _Dad, Dad! Do dragons next!_ and Ursa, applauding, trusts her husband's enthusiasm won't set the house afire.


	4. Princess

_"Except our loves at this noon stay, / We shall new shadows make the other way."_  
-- John Donne, "A Lecture Upon the Shadow"

* * *

Prince Iroh's assault on Ba Sing Se, simple in concept, is complex nearly to madness in execution. The farther he advances, the longer and more vulnerable his supply lines. From the colonies he commandeers food and men, but their arms, and the engines to breach the Impenetrable City's walls, he requisitions from the factories of the homeland.

These Ozai oversees, tireless and exacting. The general praises his brother's work in every dispatch, but Ozai scorns a quartermaster's laurels. He begs leave to "inspect" the front and fulminates, privily but explosively, when rebuffed. Ursa soothes him, hiding her unease in sympathy.

**oOoOoOo**

Lu Ten comes home, riding courier for his father, and is fêted in his place. His gallantry soon has the court at his feet, men vying for his notice and women for his favor. "I think, nephew," Ozai chaffs him at table one evening, "you have slain more ladies with your eyes than earthbenders with your sword."

"Not true," Lu Ten retorts, his ready smile glittering down the board, "though I admit that in the company of ladies I prefer to sheathe my sword."

Amid the hilarity and gasps of mock outrage, Ursa hears her husband's chuckle, late and false.

**oOoOoOo**

The wounded are tended in the field and sent to convalesce in the colonies; only the broken and the dead return across the sea. Ursa showers largesse upon the royal hospitals, visiting often to cheer the staff and their charges (and to keep the administrators honest). She encourages boys little older than Zuko to take their first steps on clever metal prosthetics -- endures the ravings of men once as masterful as Ozai, minds shattered by combat.

Returning, she kneels at the household shrine and prays for a swift end to the campaign.

(_And who knows? Perhaps her prayers are heard._)


	5. Interlude: Exile

_She plants a garden in volcanic soil and accepts, as her neighbors do, that what fire has given, fire may yet take away. They teach her to read the signs of peril in restless earth and hazy skies, but she knows that disaster may come without warning, whether the fatal stroke is prepared near at hand, unmarked, or falls far off, to send calamity roaring toward some other peaceful shore._

_Should she have divined the future in Ozai's thwarted ambitions or Azula's way of feeding turtleducks or Lu Ten's untimely death? Does it matter, when escape, like rescue, is hopeless?_


	6. Traitor

_"The morning shadows wear away, / But these grow longer all the day; /  
But oh, love's day is short, if love decay." _-- John Donne, "A Lecture Upon the Shadow"

* * *

With the conquest of the Earth Kingdom stalled into siege, Ozai's attempts to curry favor with his father grow increasingly blatant. Ursa declines to participate, but she cannot prevent Ozai from drawing the children, primarily Azula, into his schemes. _Let the Fire Lord take pride in so gifted an heir, as I do_.

Watching Azula perform flawlessly and Zuko struggle to match her before their indifferent grandfather, Ursa longs to tell her children that _she_ is proud of them -- but more than that, she loves them, and would even if they gave her nothing in which to take pride. _Always._

**oOoOoOo**

Once a word is spoken, they say, four komodo-rhinos cannot drag it back.

Ursa wishes she'd merely urged Azula to be kinder to her brother and not asked, _What did you say to upset Zuko?_ Now she cannot unhear her daughter's vile slander against Ozai and the Fire Lord. "Enough!" she gasps, taking Azula by the shoulders to shake her. "That's a monstrous thing to say!"

The girl shrugs out of her hold. "If you don't believe me," she replies, slyly defiant, "ask Father."

Ursa hesitates, misdoubting and unnerved. "We'll speak again, young lady," she promises as she departs.

**oOoOoOo**

Her husband's admission steals all the warmth from the air, until the sun burns no hotter than the frescoed flames beneath her soles. Ozai folds her trembling fingers in his. "Take comfort," he murmurs. "He leaves us Azula; someday, if not I, then she will make everything right -- "

"No," Ursa says, choosing her words carefully, lest rumor of treason reach the tyrant's ear. "Neither you nor she must raise a hand against him."

Ozai bows over her hand, as if in homage, but his glance is calculating. Bitter understanding rimes her heart, though his lips sear kisses into her palm.

**oOoOoOo**

When the light falls on her sleeping son, still clothed, tangled in his sheets, Ursa's resolve almost fails her. _Oh, why has no one undressed him?_ Has his doom already been noised abroad, that he lies thus abandoned? Or will his attendants return with the sun, rising to dispel this nightmare of treachery and parricide like mist?

_If I stay to learn the answer, I will never know._

She cannot wholly rouse him, but perhaps that is best. She whispers her urgent valediction in Zuko's ear, praying that this child, forged in love, prove strong enough to survive his quenching.


	7. Epilogue

_Dawn breaks in roseate fire, striking sparks off the saw-toothed obsidian hills, and Ursa's little cavalcade halts to breathe its mounts and make its hasty orisons. She bows her head in silence, in the shadow of her hood, scarcely daring even to beg that her ancestors' just anger spare her faithful companions -- not blameless, but faithful, though she is faithless and fainthearted too, not to follow the Fire Lord into the long dark ... _

_"Mistress?"_

_She presses her hands to her cheeks -- for comfort, for caution -- then lowers her hood to show the sun a face that defies her heart._

* * *

"Love is a growing, or full constant light, / And his first minute, after noon, is night."_  
-- John Donne, "A Lecture Upon the Shadow"_


End file.
